While former Bush administration lawyers might argue his treatment wasn’t actually torture, Boumediene — an Algerian working for the Red Crescent in Bosnia where he lived with his wife and two daughters when he was arrested in 2001 — was unequivocal. “I don’t think,” he said when asked if it was torture. “I’m sure.”

The United States responded to ABC that it’s not U.S. policy to torture prisoners. But the Boumediene case cries out for not just an investigation, but prosecution and accountability for those responsible — as well ascompensation for the victims of U.S. abuse.

Boumediene is just one of about 700 men swept up by the U.S. military after Sept. 11, 2001 based on little or no evidence. Originally arrested by Bosnian police in October 2001, he was charged with conspiracy to blow up the U.S. and British embassies in that country. When the Bosnians found no evidence to support the charges — charges Boumediene consistently vehemently denied — the charges were dropped.

But the Bush administration pressured the Bosnian government not to release him, and instead to turn him over to the U.S. military, which sent him to Guantanamo Bay.

As ABC News recounts, two weeks later, President Bush boasted Boumediene’s arrest as a victory in his “war on terror.”

“Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy,” Bush said in his address.

In fact, as ABC notes, officials of the Bush administration have never provided any credible evidence to support that charge.

Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that, contrary to the Bush administration’s claims, Boumediene and his fellow Gitmo prisoners had the right to challenge their indefinite detention by the government. In November, a federal judge ordered Boumediene’s release. Still, the U.S. government insisted he could not be released within the United States, and it wasn’t until France agreed to accept Boumediene in April that he was able to be freed.

Despite Boumediene’s seven and half year ordeal, he is, in a sense, one of the lucky ones. Another 240 men remain at Guantanamo Bay, most of whom have not yet had the same opportunity to defend themselves. About 60 have already been cleared of wrongdoing and approved for release, yet the United States refuses to accept them and can’t seem to negotiate their transfer anywhere else, either, given that the United States has branded them terrorists.

Not surprisingly, Boumediene told ABC News that he’s considering bringing a lawsuit against former Bush administration officials seeking compensation for his wrongful imprisonment and abuse.

“I cry, just I cry,” he told ABC News, because after seven years in the Guantanamo prison, “I don’t know my daughters.”

Update: Kudos to reader json, who points out that Dan Rather interviewed Boumediene last week — which would appear to undermine ABC’s claim of exclusivity…

U.S. District Court Judge John Bates ruled that the four men — all foreign nationals captured by U.S. forces outside Afghanistan and sent there to be incarcerated at a prison on the U.S.-run Bagram air base — have the same rights as prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, who were similarly sent there by U.S. forces from other countries.

As I’ve written before, the Bagram prison — which is fast turning into Obama’s Gitmo — has many of the same attributes as the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. That’s just what the lawyers for the four detainees there argued.  Although the Obama administration had, like the Bush administration before it, argued forcefully that Bagram detainees have no constitutional rights and therefore no rights to challenge their detention in U.S. courts, Bates — a conservative judge appointed by former President George W. Bush — today disagreed.

“The writ of habeas corpus plays a central role in our constitutional system as conceived by the Framers,” wrote Judge Bates. “Indeed, ‘the Framers deemed the writ to be an essential mechanism in the separation-of-powers scheme,’ ” he wrote, quoting the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which gave Guantanamo detainees habeas corpus rights, “that, as Alexander Hamilton observed, was vital to the protection of individuals against the very same arbitrary exercise of the government’s power to detain that is alleged by petitioners here.”

Although all four of the detainees in the case were captured outside Afghanistan and have been held at Bagram for more than six years, Bates ruled that one of the men, who is an Afghan citizen, may not be entitled to habeas corpus review because of the “practical obstacles in the form of friction with the host country.” He ordered the lawyers to file additional briefs with the court addressing those issues.